NfaN: For Evermore
by KairiVenomus
Summary: Seiko Mitsuhide is your average mother, sort-of focusing on raising her son while also fending off her annoying roommate, Lloyd. Pretty normal, right? But one day, a psychic named Zane claims she's being hunted by a powerful witch, Catherine. With her life in danger, it's up to the Prince of Hell, Noel, & a healer, Yuki, to keep Seiko safe. WITHOUT Seiko's permission. Wonderful.
1. Preface

_Hello, Nightmares for a Ninja fans! This is an original spinoff of the series.  
If you aren't an NfaN fan but just came here looking to read something, then you came to the right place. There are words here. :3 Welcome! _

**This story is basically an original story, focusing on original characters from NfaN with Ninjago canon characters appearing on the side. NO NINJA AND OC PAIRINGS. This story is for the purpose of entertaining readers who want to read into the experiences of the original characters while NfaN is happening (as they are not going to take up the Ninjago story with all their PoVs. It was deserving of its own book instead.) Don't worry about being confused; I will introduce you to every character as if you are reading a real book. Don't like, don't read.**

**THERE ARE NO OCxNINJA PAIRINGS IN THIS STORY! Just in case you missed it the first time.**

**_**To those who are not NfaN readers: ~Yin means it is Seiko's POV._**

**_**This Preface means that it is showing a bit of the end before you reach the beginning. The opposite of a flashback._**

* * *

_Preface:  
In My Veins  
~Yin_

It was insanity.

The heart's beat pounding in my ears. The sudden acknowledgement of blood running through my veins. The sounds, all fresh in my ears, every single noise able to be heard. The smells, everything wild and new to my senses. The sight, every small detail, so obvious, when before I never would've noticed it. I could hear everything happening around me. So close to my ears, it was like everything was right next to me, the crack of a tree branch a mile away sounding like a shout yelled at me from across a parking lot. I could taste scents on the air. Everything could be tasted by just a quick intake through the mouth, and I could determine the elderly nature of a room, the identity of an intruder—with this it was impossible to be beaten. All my senses coursed with new power, strengthened a thousand times over. It brought me to a new light I had never seen before. The water dripping down the sides of the cave walls were obvious to me, and I could see every reflection on their surface. It was all too much. I could hear, see, taste, and smell everything around me more than I needed to. I had never felt this way, being human…

But most of all I craved the satin liquor in which ran through the veins of the nearest being, _her_ heart able be heard by my heightened hearing: _ka-thud, ka-thud, ka-thud. She_ wasn't scared of me. _She_ wasn't afraid. From the floor of the cave, I gasped for breath, craving it, feeling the burn in my throat beginning to settle in. It was fire travelling through me, trying to scorch me from the inside out, a terrible flame that stuck to my airway. I couldn't breathe.

I dug my nails into the rocky floor, hearing the loud clacks of _her_ high heels echoing throughout the cave. Every reverberation I could feel and sense. Everything was too much. I was being overwhelmed by sounds, by smells, by things to look at—I was being driven mad.

I stared at the pair of glossy shoes that stopped before me, and _she_ knelt down in front of me, cold blue eyes giving me a stretched, triumphant smile that could've eaten me up. Golden hair raveled down her shoulders. I gasped again, daring to jump on her and take her down, but before I could spring into action, she held out her wrist to me. I stared at the thick blue vein in it, full of what I sickeningly craved. She raised her other arm and in one fluid motion drug a white-tipped fingernail across her skin, creating a tear in her flesh. This rip revealed a beautiful, thick river crimson that leaked from her cut. I stared, the hunger for her exposed blood driving me mad. My throat turned to fire again, unbearable enough as it is.

She smiled down at me like I was her daughter, something she had created and was very, very proud of. I guess, in a way, maybe I was. What was I other than Frankenstein's monster?

"Drink up," she said, and I lunged.

* * *

**_Go have an awesome day/night!_**


	2. Chapter 1

**Hi, everyone. This chapter goes hand-in-hand, really, with chapter 24 of Shadowland, which is part of the NfaN series. You might understand the last part of this chapter better if you go to Shadowland and read that one first, which you can easily find by clicking on my username by the title and scrolling through my stories list. Unless you've already read it. Then...carry on. :)**

**I'm not forcing you to read it if you haven't though. So don't feel pressured! Just a tip!**

* * *

_One: Nightmares  
~Yin  
_ONE WEEK BEFORE

_He was grinning at me. _

_A shadow hung heavily over his face, turning him only half-visible in the shadows around us, the space beneath his eyebrow as black as the left shadow over his face, another pit of endless ebony underneath his one visible cheekbone. His white smile gleamed through the ostensibly dense shadow. Impenetrable black waves crawled over our heads; we were free-floating in water that acted like outer space, keeping me dry but acting just as fluid, pushing me up into the air bobbing as I kept my mouth closed, hoping not to let any of the air get inside of my lungs. He hung there like he was standing, not hovering or floating like I was. He just smiled, burning through the chill in the space and turning everything even blacker with the smoke of his dangerous ways carrying through. I was scared to breathe it in. What if I was poisoned by his evil the second I took a swallow of this watery air? His smoke floated through the continuum and shied me into trying to swerve away from its ghastly wisps. _

_Not this again._

_I look to the surface of the water, dark and gray like liquid storm clouds. No escape from down here, so far under that swimming up would tire me, and I'd crash under again. The seemingly endless amount of time to hold my breath stretches on impossibly. I know this trapping situation better than anyone in the whole world, and yet still I haven't found myself used to this yet, my every second knowing that I was trapped underneath this water, with him. I have been here thousands of times. I should not be so scared. I should know better._

_But I don't. _

_His smile never fades. He keeps still, favored by the waters that keep knocking me around, making me bob and swivel like a floating corpse would be atop the lake it was dumped in, being saddled along by the flow. I guess in here I am no more than just that; without any escape I am no better than dead until it's over. My black hair floats up around my face, Medusa's great serpentine locks curling through themselves, softened by the water. My vision is blurred by the water, but I know this place so well I don't need to see._

_He watches me, always grinning, always teasing me with what he knows and I don't. His one visible blue eye through the shadow stares out at me, unblinking, visible from circumference to diameter, even to someone who is distances away from him. His pupil shoots down to a needlepoint when he stares at me. When I look away I can feel it open up until I turn back to face him. _

_A bubble leaves my throat, floating up to the gray surface alone. Neither of us make a move._

_What always terrifies me in this strange, whimsical dream world is him. Nothing else here can matter but him, and what unexpected thing he'll do this time, changing the game every round we go (which is usually most nights of the week.) He _always_ changes it. Every time this happens to me, when I am sucked underneath into this nightmare, I wake up screaming bloody murder, forcing the neighbors in the apartment building to file another unpursued complaint against me. After a while some of them just give up trying to get the owner of the building to kick me out or shut me up, knowing that it happens save for two nights every week, and whatever nights those may be come blissfully to their door. _

_I'm usually never alone when I wake up, finding myself in a cold sweat that ensures me a shower the next morning, and a pair of gently strong arms wound around me, blocking out the waves of the nightmare crashing over me. The dream always disappears when he comes in, putting his arms around my waist and burying his face into the back of my neck. He chases them away, and I wake. Simply done, I have always wondered if I would be rid of this horrific recurring nightmare if he slept in the same bed as me. But I dare not ask._

_In any event, that is what has been done for the past two years, anyway. _

_I look to the monster in my dream, so close but distances away. My throat doesn't ache for the air this underwater space didn't have. At least, not yet. I find my arms bent and raised at my sides, the water keeping them lifted. My movements are slow and meticulous with the current working against me, but I am able to push my arms so that I am able to at least stretch them out. _

_"Do you know where we are?" He asks, teeth flashing white in the shadow of his lip. His voice shows no sign that he struggles to breathe under here. This is a new question to me. He has never asked it before. Unable to answer, I shake my head, hair waving around me in slow motion. He flashes me his killer smile again. "This is what once my palace was," he explains, gesturing without strain against the water to the empty space of nothing around him. "It was so until your friends destroyed it, cunning bastards."_

_I almost choke on my held breath. I can feel his danger wade around me. I remember not to breathe, and continue. I know what place he speaks of, the place that took from me my honor, my confidence, my soul. It was Pandemonium Bastion, a place hidden in a crack between realms. The only thing it once held was a castle built by the very demon standing in front of me, shadow encompassing the left half of his face in pitch black. Now it had to be nothing, because my rescuers had blown it up and sealed the crack in the dimensions before it bled out onto Earth. _

_He knows that I am thinking about my time spent here. He keeps smiling. "It was once magnificent, glowing with glory. Now it's nothing but a filled seam. All the smoke from the explosion went up there." He tilts back his head, pointing to the surface of the water above us. It ripples like someone skimmed their fingers across the water, flicking it before retreating. He looks back down to me. He is not smiling anymore. I know that the worst is coming soon. "Now there is nothing here but me and the debris."_

_You're dead, I think, staring hard at him, trying to convince myself that he is really dead, my worst nightmare taken down by a group of heroes I didn't know well. I was there when the fissure between realms was sealed, watching it close and forever separate me from a world I never wanted to see again. I know for a fact that no creature could've survived the explosion set off in the bastion. No one. Not even him. _

_"Kaos" the Deadly. _

_Thinking his name makes my mouth taste like metal and my body tense up, preparing for a fleet of bad memories to crawl through me, but none came. I watch Kaos look at me, knowing him for who he really is. After all, I look at his twin practically every day, and not once can I connect this monster with the one I know, though I am constantly reminded of what happened to me. I bite my lip, clenching my fists. _

_"It's so _lonely_," Kaos croons, holding out his hands. He is not inviting me to come over; he is demanding without verbally saying so or gesturing frantically for me to follow. I am afraid of him, and I don't want to go near him, but I am tugged towards him against my will, being pushed at him with the hands of the current, tackling me down and hitting me hard. I want to struggle, but my movements are so slow and dainty through the water that they look like I am trying to paddle closer to him. He holds out his hands, no smile, no light in his eye. I can see the other, much darker, glistening underneath the shadow on his face. The dark, disparaged blue iris never ceases to pulse into me and wash over me with a feeling of grogginess, helplessness that I cannot fight. I know this feeling. I felt it that day, when he took me, drugged me with his contagion, and I will never forget that feeling of powerlessness, of weakness. I feel myself getting closer to releasing my breath to scream when I am launched into him. _

_"Now I'll have you here with me," he whispers, and holding me at arm's length pushes himself closer into the flay of light that I only saw one part of his face through. I struggle to keep myself from letting go of my breath, lungs starting to hurt. His face is in full view now, and I can see that the left half of his face is scorched by fire, causing it hard to make out his features underneath the rot and decay of his dead skin starting to drip off of his skull. Now fully visible, there was a sight to be seen from here: the bone of his cheek where rotten, charred flesh had started to peel down after gaining so much weight. White bone, seen now through the light, and green, blue, gray, black skin that fell down from it, falling over his eye. I can see part of his mouth was beginning to sag, letting the space underneath his nose begin to peel off. The smell of decay hit me hard, and I try not to gag, vomit trying to come over my throat. A random fly lands on his exposed bony cheek and starts to eat away at his flesh._

Don't breathe,_ I think, trying to push down my vomit. Don't think about it. Don't look at him._

_But I cannot tear my eyes away._

_"See what you've done?" Kaos says, showing me his real face. "See what I've become because of you?" His hands wrap around my throat, and I am defenseless, unable to stop him with my tiny claws grabbing at his throat. He's trying to force the air out of me, cutting it off, starting to squeeze. Decay hits me in the face again. The look of his rotten flesh, the flies that linger around him, waiting for their dinner, and the grotesque manner of which he was baring his teeth at me made the air in my mouth, desperate to fly out, become imperative to leave behind. He shakes me, hard, snapping my head back. "See what you have _done_?!" _

_I don't realize he's bit me until I feel his teeth sink into the front of my throat. _

_I cannot resist any longer; the pain of Kaos' teeth ripping at my skin made it too much, and I opened my mouth to scream, the air in my body that kept me alive leaving me in bubbles that frantically raced to the surface of the water, gurgling noises coming from me. Why was I so muffled when he was so clear? My scream left me endlessly, shrieking to be let out of this dream, shrieking for me to be taken out, to be saved by the arms that always held me every night—where were they? Where was he? Why wasn't he saving me?_

…

"Seiko! _Seiko! _Wake _up!" _

I bolted upright, shooting up in the chilly sweat that coated my body, breathing quickly for the air that I just had choked out of me. Wet tears were already streaking down my face, caking my skin with damp strands of my hair, mixing with my sweat disgustingly enough, not that I could care at the moment. My hands reflexively flew to my aching throat, dry from the inside but not bruised on the outside, and I even searched for my own pulse, hearing my own breathing taking up all the noise in this damned wooden room. The room was not full of water. It was full of air that I could refreshingly breathe, and I was glad to breathe it, sucking in every last mouthful I could possibly take in. It dawned on me now that what I just went through was again the same dream I'd been having for five years. It wasn't real. I was safe and sound, and in this very rational world, Kaos was dead, and I wasn't swimming in water, and I wasn't drowning, and I was perfectly fine.

I buried my face in my hands and let frightened tears fall off my cheeks and into my palms, trying to calm my racing heart, finding my ground among a normal breathing routine. _He's not here, _I remembered, not thinking of Kaos, but of the he who always pulled me out of the dream and washed away every fear I had of it afterwards. The he whose shoulder I always embarrassingly hid my face into, trying to drown out the sounds of my own screams echoing in my ears. My heart ached at the thought of him, but I pushed it down immediately and let it only live for .2 seconds, knowing I wasn't going to make myself fall sorry onto _his_ damned lap. I don't need any stupid drama over some jerk like him. _Screw him,_ the strongerpart of me thought. _Let him get run over by a bus and kicked in the head by an ass. I don't need him to calm down._

"Seiko?"

I jumped ten feet at the hand that was placed on my shoulder, my name being spoken by a deep, concerned voice that I hardly recognized at the second. With at least 8 blankets tangled around my waist, I whirled around to see my dark-haired, gray-eyed older brother looking down at me on my futon, startled, hand half-outstretched towards me before I'd flipped out and made him flinch away. Cole's _rumpled-by-sleep-that-you-just-ruined _look was plain all over his exhausted face, shown in the wrinkled black T-shirt that fit closely to his muscled torso and the sweatpants he wore underneath, also including his head of messy black hair. He took his hovering hand away from me and pulled it back to him, crossing his arms over his broad chest. His face was serious, as always, and his bushy eyebrows rested furrowed over his stormy silver eyes, flashing warning at me from afar.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Sparkles," I croaked, surprised at how I could barely speak. _It's the screaming, _I thought. _My screaming was so loud… _I must've woken him up with it. He wasn't used to the strange sleeping regimen I have back at home, my apartment a mile away in Artenia, and it's not like I bothered to warn him about it when I got here…

I didn't live with my brother, who lived with my not-by-choice ass of a father. Tonight, I was here as a refugee, trying to keep myself far away from my roommate, Lloyd Garmadon, who was currently high on a dose of Devourer's venom that was narrowly beginning to kick in, turning him into the spitting image of his own father. I didn't want to think about what awful crap he'd done to me this past night, what made me run from him in the first place.

I felt my cheeks flush. Cole took a deep breath and raised an eyebrow. "You okay?" He asked, and bent down so that he could sit down on the futon beside me, bringing up his knees for his elbows to rest on. I could see all over his face that he was more tired than he'd ever been before. Who could blame him with what he'd been through this past day.

I put a hand to my forehead. The correct answer to that was no, I wasn't okay. But I didn't want him to ask too many questions of me, a girl already deep down into her funk by the nightmare she relived every night. I rubbed my eyes. "I think so."

"This is the second time tonight," Cole said menially, the room around us dark without much light other than what came through the window. He sighed, his gaze on the floor, and I knew that he wasn't too happy about those statistics, taking it from the way his lips were sorta puckered. I knew that this was the second time I'd woken up the whole household with my screaming, bloody cries ripping through the narrow hallways and up the staircase, flooding through the paper-panel doors and into everybody's ears. The first time that they'd all come running in here, I had woken to the faces of five males staring down at me, expecting me to be bleeding somewhere but finding, no, pathetically it's just a dream. You can all go back to bed now and totally forget this until later on, ya? My father had been standing in the doorway, knowing better than to come check out the scene up close. But I wasn't too lucky to find that Cole, his creepy friend Zane Montgomery, my five-year-old son Bokuyo, and his supernanny Yuki Akamatsu standing over me, all trying to figure out what was wrong with me. The attention, though in my mid-sleep, was horrific to wake up to, and once I was stable enough to sit up, I hit them all with my pillow and swatted them out of sight. Bokuyo was the only one I let stay in the room, though Cole had tried to insist that Yuki stay in there to keep an eye on me.

That's pretty much when I remembered I had hypothermia—or _used _to have it, because according to the supernanny, I was back to normal now. Let me start by saying that Yuki is a robot who is _also _a practiced herbalist, and I think he likes my son more than I do, although a lot of people like my kid more than me. The weird thing about this Yuki is not that he's a robot—trust me, I've seen enough crazy shit to make the thought of a robot not so stunning anymore—it's actually the fact that he's a robot _with _a heartbeat. It's pretty freaky. I don't know _why _he's got one, since I only found out yesterday that he has one by accident and never had the opportunity to bring it up, but he does. That part of this guy is still a mystery.

Either way, I wasn't voting that he stay in my room and stare at me while I slept, so I told Cole to take his slumber party of friends and high-tail it back to his bedroom, leaving me with Bokuyo. After explaining to him that it was just a bad dream, of course, because Cole's been trying to act more 'brotherly' lately, which is a total _drag. _My whole childhood was spent being loved 'till I was like seven or something, then hated until five years ago by my brother, who decided that he wasn't on my side anymore after our mother was killed. I've built up immunity to being hated by the people around me. Seeing Cole have to _force _himself to like me just was a pain to watch.

Plus, why the hell would I need Supernanny to watch me? Really. I didn't need someone to 'watch me.' Not happening. So I sent them all out of my room, saying it was just a nightmare, and lying down with Bokuyo at my side to try and fall back asleep. It took time to rest again, but sleep eventually did come—and I was yet again sucked back into the nightmare where Kaos kept torturing me, as had be for five years.

"Don't be surprised if there's a third," I told him, looking down at my empty bed. I saw Cole grow a little concerned at that mention, but before he could question it, I pointed to the space that was colder than ice at my side. "Where's Boku?" I asked, eyes narrowing at my brother.

Cole didn't flinch. He reached up and scratched the side of his head with a wide hand. "He said you were mumbling loudly in your sleep, and he couldn't keep his eyes closed," my brother said, purposely avoiding my gaze. "He came tumbling into my room a few minutes before you started screaming again, poking me until I got up. Kinda just like you used to," he said. This time, he looked at me, silver eyes meeting mine. I fidgeted uncomfortably in my oversized black t-shirt.

"Not the time to try and warm me up," I told him, my tone warning. I looked to the _shoji _door on the traditional Japanese guest room's entrance, pushed slightly open from when Cole came in here, and hoped I'd see Bokuyo's little face staring through the opening. There was nothing but hall darkness out there. "Where is he now?"

"He's with Zane out in the kitchen, I think." I stared blankly at the side of my brother's head. "That's where everyone else is."

"Why?"

"You woke them up again, Seiko." Cole threw me a look that I only could take as a bit ticked off. "Not to be rude, but your screaming is like a banshee wailing out into the night. I couldn't get you to stop screaming for at least a minute. You were so deep in sleep that you wouldn't come out."

I pulled my knees up to my chin, and as my only retreat, I buried my face in my arms, trying not to get angry with myself. Why did I have to do this? Why did I have to be so _scared _of Kaos and what he'd done to me? I know it's traumatizing to be—to go through that, I mean, but I'm fine now, and though I face what he did to me every day that I look at Bokuyo, I'm not _that _deeply damaged by his actions. I _shouldn't _be, anyway, because if I am I don't feel it. I don't think about it every day. I barely even think about it.

It's embarrassing.

A warm hand pressed against my shoulder. It was definitely Cole's, judging by the fact that it was a wide hand, and he was the only one in here with me anyway. I shivered under the difference between our skin temperatures. "Hey," he said softly. "It's okay. It's not your fault. It's just hard not to wake up after hearing screaming and not want to do a follow-up to make sure you're okay. Everyone wanted to come in here again, but I figured you didn't want to be crowded again." An arm curled around my waist, and I was involuntarily pulled into my brother's embrace, his chest hard and steely underneath my forehead. His strong arms kept around me. In my years away from my brother—pretty much since I was ten to the time I was fifteen—I had never known that he'd turned into a body-builder, using exercise to keep him from falling underneath his own stress. He'd always been a strong kid, but now that he'd worked himself into the point of total muscle, I was having a hard time getting used to him.

"Look"—Cole's voice rumbled deeply against my ear, pressed to his chest—"why don't you come out into the kitchen, and see what you want to do from there?"

"What do you mean, _see what I wanna do from there?"_

"If you want to continue to sleep or if you want to stay awake." Cole gently pushed me back, looking me in the eyes. I saw sympathy there, but no empathetic translation between our sibling bond, which had been chopped at with an ax and crudely repaired by Scotch tape. I pulled away from Cole immediately, still sensitive to human touch. "It's only five in the morning, and I figure if you don't want to sleep, you can stay up with Yuki. We all know he doesn't rest."

I rolled my eyes, watching my brother stand to his feet, outstretching a hand towards me. Without taking it, I got up on my own, then tugged uncomfortably at the long shirt I was wearing. It was Cole's, and it wasn't exactly long enough.

Running for my life from the ever-frightening Lloyd Garmadon last night had been one of the most terrifying moments I've ever lived through, the feeling that he was following me and about to attack me becoming too much to bear as I ran through the crowds on the sidewalk outside of my apartment building, snowflakes practically drifting out of the sky on top of me. I had only come out of the shower when I was almost assaulted by him, but Twinkies was too meticulous to have come at me right then and there. He'd tried in a more personal way to get into my towel, and with the way his eyes were glowing red I knew he was still feeling the throb of that venom shit that he had inside of him—stuff I wasn't quite totally informed on, but now was sure I'd have a front-row ticket to the lecture about it. My only means of escape was punching him in the face, grabbing my robe and Bokuyo, and running outside, trying to get as far away from him as possible. I had stolen Lloyd's phone and dialed Cole's number into the touch-screen, finding my brother's voice somewhere at a hospital. It was freezing cold outside, winter dawning on me in my robe, bare feet, and dripping wet hair. I suppose that's where the hypothermia started to set in. I dunno. Cole had sent Yuki—AKA Supernanny—after me to pick me up and bring me to my brother, who was in Ignacia at the time awaiting news about his friend, Jay Walker, who had some kind of problem with falling out a window. Cole, Zane, and Yuki, the trio of three who were joined at the hip now or something, finally retreated with me and my son back to my father's house when nightfall was too old for them to stay at the hospital. Since the only thing I had to wear was my robe, Cole at some point had given me one of his shirts, although I don't remember that encounter.

This one was too short on me. I _knew _I didn't have any underwear on, either, so the second I sit down, I know all three of those boys are going to get to see _me. _And I am SOOO NOT doing that.

Cole noticed my fidgeting and scratched his chin. "Here," he said, and reached to the hem of his shirt. I watched him, disgusted, as he peeled it off of himself, revealing a toned, muscled torso underneath that would give tons of other girls nose bleeds. Cole pulled his shirt right-side-out again and passed it to me, shaking out his side-swept black hair. "That one probably is longer, since the one you're wearing is old."

"Why did you give me an old shirt in the first place, Sparkles?" I asked, looking for the bottom of the shirt that was too hard to find in the clutter of darkness. Cole was already padding for the doorway, his back turned to me, and even his skin there was olive and naturally perfect. I scowled at the fact that my brother had better genetics than me.

"Didn't know you'd outgrown it," he identified, and slid the door shut behind him.

…

I padded into the kitchen minutes later, Cole's old shirt in my hands. He was right; his 'newer' shirt was longer on me, and reached mid-thigh, so I at least had a little leeway. The kitchen was bright, the overhead lamp sparking into life. I had never seen it so full of testosterone before, plenty of men to keep the spark going in just this cluster; the island in the middle of the black-and-white-tiled floor was practically surrounded with the current residents of Lou Mitsuhide's two-story home. Stainless steel appliances surrounded by white cabinets decorated the whole room, but not one encouragement saying was hung on the wall anywhere, proving really how 'positive' my father was when it came to garnishing off a room. Sarcasm indeed intended.

A kettle was boiling on the stove, matching the lacquer of the stainless steel. I could see steam puffing out of its spout. In the room, Zane and Cole stood in front of me at the island, backs towards me, both showing that they were still tired in their forms. I could see on the end of the island to my left the little dark head that belonged to Cole's daughter, Rie, who came from an affair he had with that girl named Nya that I never got connected to. She was the same age as Bokuyo. Speaking of which…where was Bokuyo? I didn't see him, nor did I see Yuki anywhere.

The second I stepped in all I could hear was my father's obnoxious, evil, irritatingly happy voice.

"Oh, you'd just think it was the most amazing thiiinngg~~!" My father was exclaiming, and I could see him walking around the room in his nightclothes with a smile on his old, wrinkling face. Even when he was supposed to be disheveled by sleep, Lou made sure to keep his comb-over neat, and his squinted eyes were closed as he smiled at Cole's friends, gathered around him. I rolled my eyes. "I was just so proud of Cole. He does such a good job at what he does!"

"You mean acting?" That voice belonged to Zane Montgomery, whose back was to me, the happy-go-lucky friend of Cole's that always had a tendency to creep me out with his random smiles and freaky ability to know just what you were thinking. He sounded chipper, too. Just exactly _how _long had they been awake?

"Yes!" Lou exclaimed—or rather, _sang. _"I'm so proud of him, going to the Oppenheimer and becoming a star! So proud of you, son!"

"How many more times are you gonna say it, Dad?" Cole was standing beside Zane, back also facing me. He'd gotten on another shirt, this one a light brown. "I _know. _Doesn't mean you need to keep telling me that." He crossed his arms over his chest.

"But I am!" Lou said. "I've written so many songs about you!"

"Great." Cole sounded less than happy about that.

Zane was always the type of person who struck me as thinking of others first, someone who thought of every person he'd ever met, including the mailman and a dude he walked past at the post office, before he'd ever think about himself. I had seen him do this more than once in the while that I'd known him and begrudgingly had become befriended to him, and now was yet another example of that. "Have you ever written any songs about Seiko?" he asked, still polite.

I snorted. It startled everyone into noticing my presence behind them all, making Zane and Cole turn around, scared. I dangled Cole's old shirt from my fingertips at him. "Of _course _Lou hasn't ever written any songs about me," I said, trying not to let my bitterness show. "If you haven't noticed, Zane, he doesn't particularly _like _me, as much as he worships the ground that Cole walks on." Lou hadn't ever liked me since my mother's death, just like Cole had turned off the switch when she was gone. I was nothing to them without her. "And I'd never want my image to be disgraced by some lame-ass acapella song that he sings with his stupid quartet."

Was I being mean on purpose? Yeah. I was. I hoped Lou realized that no matter if I'd aged suddenly, I still hated his guts, and would never forgive him for his abuse. Ever. I didn't look over at him to see if he'd reacted or not. Instead, in Zane's face, I saw him look sorrowful, like it _hurt _him that I was a parentless child, but I really didn't care at that point. I tossed the shirt to Cole, then looked around like I hadn't already searched the room for my son. "Where's Boku?" I asked for the third time tonight. Cole opened his mouth, hands already on his hips.

The front door opened. My eyes slid between Cole's brute form and Zane's thin one to see a familiar form moving through it, the slender form of Yuki Akamatsu, the robot with the inscrutable heartbeat. Yuki is somewhat of a challenge to look at when you first see him, because though it's apparent after a while that he's a man, at first glance you can mistake him for a woman. He has long, silvery-white hair that he keeps in a ponytail on the back of his head all the time, two large chunks of hair that fall at either side of his face past his chin from being too short or something to fit into the elastic band. His eyes are the color of the desert, and his pupils are always contracted to pinpoints, unless he's scanning your figure for danger/reasons to be afraid of you. He has heavy silver eyelashes. His voice is so quiet that sometimes I have a really hard time hearing him speak—I don't think it's because he's scared to raise it; I just think he's too reticent a person to be able to. When Yuki moves, he moves gracefully, carefully, tentatively, as though he's walking on thin ice all the time. He's usually wearing some kind of kimono—a _man's _kimono—so some people might think it's a dress, therefore seeing him as a woman. He's more beautiful than most women I've actually ever seen.

But I know better now, after having him babysit Bokuyo time-and-time again.

However…that doesn't apply to some of us.

Yuki came in the door with a small paper bag in hand, wearing nothing but his oil-drenched kimono, sandals on his feet. He didn't look cold at all; I don't believe he feels the weather. In fact, with his robot body, I'm pretty sure Dr. Julien never built him to suffer through winter or summer or the awkward transition seasons between. All this aside from his heartbeat, I mean.

His eyes fell into mine the second he stepped in the door. I felt, for that brief second, my breath get punched out of me. But when he tore his gaze away so that he could shut the door softly behind him, whatever fog had ran over me dissipated, and I took in a great breath for the one I'd lost. _Weirdo, _I thought of myself and stuck out my chin the way I always do when I'm being defiant or argumentative. _Don't do that again._

Yuki shook out his hair, swishing behind him in his ponytail. "It is frosty out," he said, voice almost above a near whisper. He raised the small brown paper bag into his hand.

"What's that?" asked Zane politely as he brought a mug of what I guessed was tea to his lips, always nice to his kin. Would it be considered "kin" if Zane was made by the same guy who made Yuki?

Yuki moved into the kitchen after slipping off his sandals. I saw Lou's eyes light up when he saw Yuki gravitating closer to the island, setting down the tiny bag in front of him. I watched, thunderstruck, as my father gave a creepy pedophile, closed-eyed smile to Yuki, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. The herbalist, bent over the bag, looked up in surprise at the hand that was laid over his arm like that, and my father, eyes still squinted shut, grinned a toothy smile underneath his curly moustache. I hid my smile at how dismayed Yuki looked, either hand on both cardboard-wrap handles of the paper bag, frozen while he tried to figure out what my father was doing. Was the Supernanny not used to being touched? He furrowed his brows and eyeballed Lou's hand.

Lou's voice was surprisingly light, bashful, and friendly, being the dark-sided man only I knew. "Do you need help carrying any other bags in, Yuki-chaaaannn~~?" He sang.

And all hell coulda broke loose.

Yuki's dismayed face turned to sheer horror, his mouth falling open. Zane started choking on his tea. Cole made a noise. Lou finally opened his eyes, confused about what was happening with the others, while I stood in the background holding in my own laughter at my father's endless stupidity. Yet again here was more proof that my father was more ridiculous than he let on. He'd just said -_chan, _which, when added to the end of somebody's name, is meant to address females in Japanese. And simply put, he'd tacked it on the back of Yuki's name.

Yuki looked like he was gonna cry. His face started turning red, his eye started to twitch, and all he could do was stare at Lou, shrinking from his touch like it was lathered with poison. His hands were curled at his chest. He looked like he wanted to die right there.

Zane was trying to regain his compatible breathing pattern through his chokes. Cole began stuttering for an answer to Lou's confused, circular mouth. "Dad—" he started, putting his hand on the back of his neck in an inept twitch. "Dad, uh, you know, Yuki…"

Lou squinted at his son. "What is it?" He asked, sounding suspicious.

I couldn't contain my laughter anymore, and shook with it, my cackles filling the room. Zane turned to me with his hand on his throat. Cole looked upset with me. Yuki still was staring at my dad, frozen in shock. Don't know why, I mean, is he sensitive to women or something?

I wiped at my eye like there was a real tear there. Giggles were still fitting my body, but I said around them, "Lou, Yuki is a_ man." _I started laughing again, ready to tip over. You can't _not _laugh at that. Lou, being all pedophilic and stroking Yuki's arm, being flirty with him, and calling him a girl, I mean—come _on! _It's IMPOSSIBLE not to laugh at Lou's idiocy.

My father jumped away from Yuki like he had rabies. They both were leaning away from each other. "WHAT?!" My father exclaimed, about to cry with his jaw dropped to the floor. "You're a—you're a—"

"I'm certainly no woman!" Yuki breathed, face still beet red.

"Oh, no, this can_not _be true, my—and my _nosebleed!" _Lou turned around, running for the exit on the right side of the room. "And my _dream!" _He shouted as he ran down the hallway. His heavy footsteps receded after the slam of a door in the distance.

I was still laughing my hardest. Oh, too _hilarious. _And disgusting. Lou got a nosebleed and had a dream over Yuki? EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Yuki, the poor thing, looked devastated, and he was so traumatized that I started to feel bad for him. I didn't know he was so sensitive about his gender; usually I just woulda punched anyone who thought I was a guy, getting angry over it, but I guess you could say that we're two different people. (OMGarmadon Seiko big shocker there!) Zane put down his cup to go comfort his friend, and Cole started apologizing right off the bat, and it was this big mess around Yuki that made his face get redder because he was getting too much attention.

Which makes me question just how a robot can blush. Robots don't have blood, so they can't blush, especially not from cheeks to hairline. Why, exactly, was Yuki blushing, then?

"Mama." I turned around in the doorway, finding Bokuyo standing behind me, rubbing his eyes. His mop of messy dark hair was sticking up all over the place. In his pajamas, he looked like he was still sleepy, and his tiny little round baby belly was poking out from underneath his long-sleeved shirt, belly button showing. His bluish-gray eyes looked up at me innocently, still sleepy, and his tiny little lips puckered.

I smiled down at him. "Where ya been?" I asked.

"Bat'room."

"You feel okay?" I asked, reaching down towards him. I slid my hands underneath his arms and pulled him into mine. Bokuyo's chubby baby face was rosy, like he was still asleep. He pulled a thumb to his lips.

"Ya."

"Okay?"

"Ya." He assured me. I pulled his head onto my chest.

"Are you sleepy?"

"Ya."

I kissed the top of his messy head. I looked back to Yuki, who was now rejecting Cole and Zane, stating that he felt "fastidiously smothered by their willingness to be so civilly generous in their apologies." Bokuyo mumbled something around the thumb in his mouth. "What?" I asked. It was just jumbled to me.

"Ooki." He pointed to Yuki. "Sad?"

"No. More like…embarrassed."

"Bay'wass't."

"Close enough." I neglected to teach him proper Ninjean when he was younger, always busy with work; though Zane, whom I used to live with at the Monastery of Clockwork, and Lloyd, before he turned into a total jackass on venom, tried to teach him words, Boku would never listen to any of them, refusing to repeat the words they tried to sound out to him. I'd only ever seen him really try with Yuki, but even then it wasn't sure-words to improve his vocabulary.

"Wai?" Boku asked.

"Long story."

"I like sto-wees."

"Not this one." I petted his back. Pretending like nothing happened and hoping to ignore that it _did _happen, Yuki broke away from Cole and Zane for the final time, and with his cheeks only pink now, he turned back to his small paper bag. He pulled out a small packet of green herbs, and with my father out of the room, I felt more comfortable wandering in to see what it was.

Again, the herbalist looked up at me, meeting my eyes directly. I didn't realize I stopped breathing until he looked away again. He moved towards the kettle on the stove, still a little pink in the cheeks, and he was still recovering from that wave of total awkwardness. "I went to Ninjago City to buy these," Yuki said to—I think—all of us, opening the kettle's lid and gently peeling apart the packet, dispensing the contents into the boiling water.

"Wait, you did?" Cole asked. "When did you do that?"

"Shortly after Seiko's fit. I was surprised to find you all awake when I returned, as you were asleep when I left." Yuki's face was almost totally back to normal, pale and chalky. He turned to face us all, and rested his eyes into mine once more. This time, I made _sure _I didn't fall feebly underneath his attractive gaze. I stuck out my chin to remind myself. "I went to Mystake's shop looking for them. They're called aero leaves_," _he said, playing with the clear plastic packaging between his thin, pianist fingers. "They help with sleep and keep nightmares away. I didn't have any in my car, so I thought I'd go pick some up for you."

I blinked at him. He'd driven all the way to Ninjago City…to buy some of those leaves for _me? _Why would he do that? Ninjago City is _miles_ away from here. Why would he spend his time going out there to buy herbs for _me?_

Yuki shrugged one shoulder, like he knew what I was thinking. "I do whatever I can to help someone who needs it," he said, and his eyes jerked away from my body to the floor. He looked like he shut down, slamming a door in my face. I felt like someone just ripped off a piece of my skin when he turned away briskly, suddenly losing the softness in himself. His posture was too rigid. He seemed…like he just left himself.

Bokuyo made a sucking sound on his thumb, and I found him asleep in my arms. I watched Yuki fiddle with the pot. "Once you drink this, you should be able to neatly fall back asleep," he said to me, and this time his tone was—though soft—a little more flat than before, more business-like. Professional, like a doctor speaking to a patient. I narrowed my eyes. _What's with the change in the 'tude? _I thought, growing a wall over myself, just in case he decided he wanted to attack me with words or something. Although it _is _kinda hard to see him trying to inflict pain onto another person because he's naturally a passivist. "And I promise you won't have another nightmare again, as long as you drink this before you sleep."

I stared at his back. He didn't turn to me. _Why did he suddenly shut me out? _I thought, feeling a little pushed away, but then again, I shouldn't be such a baby over it. Not like I haven't been on my own for years or anything.

I lifted my chin, sticking it out again. I saw Cole face-palm out the corner of my eye. He must've recognized that, knowing I do it when I'm about to bring the pain. "Thanks," I jeered icily, showing Yuki that if he wanted to play that game, I could play it ten times better.

"No problem," Yuki murmured absentmindedly, switching off the stove. He didn't _once _look at me. He didn't even so much as _react _to me. I felt myself get a little tipped over by that. I was just totally rejected.

I could feel Zane's and Cole's eyes going back and forth between the two of us, wondering what was going on, but I could hardly say myself. One second I felt my breath escape me when he looked into my eyes…the next he was shutting me out, and I was getting angry with his sudden desire to ignore me. It happened like the turn of a book's page.

And it was ridiculous to even _be _like that with Supernanny, because, basically, he was the friend of Zane's who adored and babysat my child, and I hardly associated with him whatsoever except for when I saw him in passing as I left or entered my apartment when he _was _minding my kid. He was the healer/herbalist dude who knew a thing or two about booboos. He was the guy who people stared at when he walked by on the street because they were unsure of his gender, and no matter what he was, he was attractive. Safe to say we'd never spoken more than 100 words to each other.

So there wasn't any reason for me to find myself breathless when he looked at me, or to be hurt by his abrupt will to debar me from his associates. I turned on my heel and left the room without knowing that I was going to, already halfway back to my room before I realized that I'd left, running from my problems like I always did.

Bokuyo mumbled at me around his thumb. I didn't have the energy to respond to him. God knows though, I tried. But my throat was too full of an unconditional lump for me to be able to.

* * *

**First chapter. Yay? **

**Go have an awesome day/night! **


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